New Tool Helps Countries Assess Uses and Sources of Health Worker Data
Without current, accurate data on health workers, countries can’t ensure that the right provider is in the right place with the right skills. A new resource, WHO Country Assessment Tool on the Uses and Sources for Human Resources for Health (HRH) Data, contains questions to help countries gather information on the uses, type, and quality of health worker data at the institutional level. Countries can use the resulting information to identify priorities and develop strategies to strengthen human resources information systems (HRIS) at the district, regional, or national level.
CapacityPlus contributed to the development of this resource through the World Health Organization’s Health Workforce Information Reference Group (HIRG). The HIRG based this resource on the assessment tool in the HRIS Strengthening Implementation Toolkit produced by the Capacity Project, which preceded CapacityPlus. CapacityPlus’s Dykki Settle worked with the HIRG to pilot, strengthen, and refine it. The current version of the tool has been field tested in Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe.
The World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control have been using the new tool to develop HRIS requirements in Rwanda, Guatemala, and Nigeria. In turn, this work is serving to strengthen CapacityPlus‘s iHRIS health workforce information software and tools—iHRIS was adapted to the developed requirements in Rwanda in 2011, and is being adapted to meet the Guatemala requirements by the regional USAID Conservation Action Plan/Central America and Mexico project with CapacityPlus technical support. Looking ahead, in February CapacityPlus will learn from the new requirements being developed in Nigeria and will support the Ministry of Health’s leadership of Nigerian HRIS systems.
Related items:
FEATURED RESOURCES
